Reviews - The Grapes of Wrath

5.63k reviews for:

The Grapes of Wrath

John Steinbeck

3.78 AVERAGE

becca_at_tiffanys's review against another edition

4.75

dark emotional sad tense

charis_et2's review against another edition

5.0

challenging dark emotional sad slow-paced

d_f's review against another edition

4.0

challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Rough read. Heavy story of struggle and survival. Tragic ending. Soul got tired of following their constant fight to overcome and keep on dreaming.

dustincorreale's review against another edition

4.0

Really beautiful and sharp. The characters are all strong, in the literary sense and in the emotional sense. Almost everyone in the family is that calm stoic type, which is maybe my favorite character archetype, so I got along with everybody very well. All except Rose of Sharon and Connie pretty much.

The ending caught me off guard in that there wasn't one. There just isn't any more book after a point. I don't mind leaving with a bunch of ambiguity but it just didn't feel like an ending. It's similar to when someone is talking and they finish a sentence but the way they speak it sounds like they had more to say. There's that moment of anticipation before you ask if that's all. It was especially sudden since I was listening to this on audio book, so I didn't have the physical gauge of how near the end I'd gotten. Suddenly it was "This has been Grapes of Wrath" and I said "What!?" out loud to nobody. In retrospect ending that way does make it feel like their life goes on. It feels so abrupt because there's so much left to do, and ending there leaves you with that feeling of what's yet to come. It's not a book about the struggle, not about the solution. So I guess I've come around to appreciating the ending in the space of this paragraph.

I'm trying to think about it in a larger sense, to see if I can get a feel for the shape of it's impact on me. On a certain level I have an aversion to anything that vilifies "greed" or "selfishness", but on the other hand, there is a lack of humanity in the picture this paints that I can't ignore. This is an issue I've been weighing a lot lately. The balance between individual power and agency vs an awareness of the general water level. People need to be able to succeed and aspire for greatness but people also should recognize their position in the whole. I'll always be against any compulsory solution, but I feel like there should be some compromise between the 2 extremes. I don't know, I haven't reached any kind of conclusion and I guess neither has anybody else in the world. I need to start reading books that help me close these issues instead of pointing me down whole new dark alleys.